Peacemakers Part III

Pastor Jacob Marchitell
15 hours ago
24 min read

December 21st 2025

So far in our study of this single verse, Matthew 5:9, we have looked at a number of different aspects of peace. And like good stewards of the Word that was given to us, it is wise to remember where we are.

When we first opened our Bibles to this verse we understood that we can only be peacemakers towards those in our personal life or in our Nation, once and only because Jesus Christ made peace between us and Himself. This is so important to remember brothers and sisters, because the level of division between the unregenerated heart and the God they sin against…is far deeper than any that may exist between people. We will touch on this later this morning, but before we get there, let's continue to call to mind where we have been.

Once our hearts have been purified by God, and we set about making peace, the only way it can be done is by the audible declaration of the Gospel. Telling people with your mouths, who God is, who we are, and what God has done about the difference, is the only way peace can be made…because it places the onus of their heart being softened fully upon the only One capable of softening it. It is Christ who softens hearts, not us. It is Christ who brings peace between man and the God of the Universe, thereby giving us a life of peace. No matter the highs or lows that may come our way, children of God, we can have peace, because we have peace with Him who ordains the highs and lows.

We closed out last week with the truth that because God is the one who produces the results of our efforts, it frees us up to love our enemies and leave the vengeance up to Him. This is how we can bless those who curse us, and love those who spitefully use us. Were the results of peace between people ultimately dependent on us, the idea of loving your enemy would be a foreign sound. It would be at best odd, and at worst offensive.

To help us see the weight His words carried that day on the mount, and how counter-cultural they truly were, we need to look at the original audience. In doing so, however, it is going to bring up (hopefully!) a number of other thoughts that we are going to explore.

The Original Audience:

First Century Palestine was a powder-keg of ethnic and political fervor. Both of which (ethnicity and politics) were combined into a mass cloud of animosity and hatred. As so goes with all human societies, the difficulty in trying to understand and come to terms with racial and political differences goes away when you combine them.

Why try and understand a different ethnicity’s cultural practices, when they serve a false god, and thereby the way they structure their civil government is automatically wrong. Throw them all into one big pot, make sure they melt together, and we no longer have to think through hard and complicated things. No need to understand how or why God made different races; no mental sweat will be required to think about the forces of darkness in the heavenly places that once held sway over different cultures; and no need to understand what God says about Governments. The negative effect of American luxury has resulted in us not exerting any mental or spiritual strain in accounting for some of the things we are going to discuss this morning.

I understand that this might be a touch confusing, so here are some questions that will help clear the air before we talk about the Original Audience Jesus was speaking to:

Can you separate the ethnic Jew from the religious one? Can you separate the Indian from Hinduism; the English from the Crown; or better yet, can you separate an understanding of what it means to be an American…from Democracy?

_____

The Original Audience that day on the Mount, was a people awash in civil chaos. At this time, they had been under the yoke of Imperial Rome for right around a Century (93yrs), their Religious, Ethnic, and Civil identity all but snuffed out by the foreign legions, or buried beneath layers of guilt from the heretical teachings of the Pharisees. They were a people group with a deep and rich history, tracing all the way back to the Garden, and knew what they had lost.

From the time of the Assyrian Exile (2 K. 17; Is. 7-8; Is. 36-37; Micah) and onward, they were ruled by one foreign empire after the next. After ~130yrs of living under the Assyrians, Nebuchadnezzar brought the Babylonians to bear against their cities and people (Jer. 52); bringing them into exile for 70 years before they could return to their homeland. While this was happening, Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem while Zerubbabel rebuilt the Temple (Neh. 1-7), and the Babylonians fell to The Persian Empire who assumed control of Israel. For around 200 yrs the Persians reigned over Israel, and that is where we leave them at the end of the Old Testament. During this “intertestamental period” (between the Old and New Testaments) Alexander the Great rises to power, conquers the Persians, and thereby acquires Israel. It isn't until Alexander the Great’s death, and his kingdom fracturing between his four generals, that Israel sees a period of self-rule for around 200yrs until Rome comes in.

Are you still with me? You guys know what happens when I start talking History.

So…Alexander the Great dies, the Macedonian (Greek) Empire is fracturing, and another kingdom, The Seleucid Empire steps in, assumes control of Israel, but is met with fierce backlash. The Jews have had enough of foreign rule, and took up arms against the invaders.

Starting in 160 BC (before Christ) we see the Jews engaging in a guerilla warfare campaign against the Seleucid Empire, eventually giving way to total war. This war is commonly called the Maccabean Revolt, and all takes place before the New Testament even starts. The Jews push back the Seleucid Empire and take back the Temple over a course of 8 days and nights (which is what Hanakkuh celebrates), and so begins the Hasmonean Dynasty.

Now, the Jews are living under self-rule for the first time since before Babylon. They wanted peace, and they killed to get it. So…what did they do with their peace? They combined the spheres of authority of Church and State, created an ethno-civic leviathan, and then undertook a massive expansionist campaign against all the surrounding territory. The towns of Galilee and Samaria, having been forcibly settled with foreigners by the Assyrians in 2 Kings 17:24, weren't truly Jewish, and therefore needed to be cleansed. By threat of violence the Israelis would force Jewish customs on them, including circumcision, conquering and subjugating any that stood in the way between them and the Old Testament borders promised to them by God.

Rome finally rises to power in 63 BC, takes control, and the New Testament starts. So, when Jesus is born that day in Bethlehem, He is born into and grows up inside of, a people whose only peace came by the edge of a sword. The constant and ever-present division, and religious and ethnic divides everywhere created a population of radicalized citizenry who were ready and eager to pick up a sword.

The Jews wanted Rome out so bad, that an organization was formed which gives us in the modern world the phrase “Cloak & Dagger”. The ‘Sicarii’ was a shadow organization of clandestine Jewish assassins who would kill in public, often at religious festivals or other large gatherings, then disappear into the crowds. Anyone they saw as being too comfortable with Roman rule was cut down, and no one was off limits. The High Priest, teachers, men, women, and children.

To close out this History lesson, I hope it has shed some new light on two different verses this morning. John 6:15, when it says the people were going to make Jesus King by force; and Matthew 21:46 when the Pharisees didn't arrest Jesus…because they were afraid of the crowd.

If we were to fast forward past the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, the powder-keg that was First Century Palestine erupts as the ethno-religious passions give way to the first of three Jewish-Roman wars in 70 AD; the total annihilation of Jerusalem; the destruction of the Second Temple; and the displacement of Israel as a people group until 1948.

These were the people who heard that it was the meek who would inherit the Earth,

and who heard that peacemakers are the children of God.

Does any of this sound familiar?

When we begin to work through the manner in which ethnic Israelites lived in the First Century, this might have been a touch uncomfortable for us to wrestle with. Aren't they God’s chosen people? Doesn’t He still have a plan for them? What about Romans 11? What about “the remnant"?” On and on these questions bounce through the modern American mind, but asking a simple question might help us accept what the Bible does in fact say.

Will God be looking at

someone’s DNA on Judgment Day?

Romans 9:1-8 → “I tell the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, [2] that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. [3] For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, [4] who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; [5] of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God. Amen. [6] But it is not that the word of God has taken no effect. For they are not all Israel who are of Israel, [7] nor are they all children because they are the seed of Abraham; but, “In Isaac your seed shall be called.” [8] That is, those who are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God; but the children of the promise are counted as the seed.”

Who are the children of God? …not the children of the flesh.

As I said, this might seem hard to come to terms with, but again, some questions will help us understand. Is Jesus Christ the only way into heaven? Yes (Jn. 14:6). Is Jesus Christ God? Yes (Jn. 10:30; Col. 2:9). If someone rejects Jesus Christ, will God reject them? Yes (1 Jn. 2:23). Now take that, and compare it to what The Talmud teaches:

“On the eve of Passover, they hanged Yeshu (Jesus) because he practiced sorcery and enticed Israel to apostasy.” (Sanhedrin 43a)
“Jesus is a ‘fatherless son’, born from adultery.” (Yabemoth 49b) because His mother was a prostitute for Carpenters. (Sanhedrin 106a)
In ‘Gittin 56’ a necromancer raises Christ from the dead and claims that Jesus Himself said: “I am punished in boiling excrement because I mocked the words of the Rabbis.”

The Jews in the modern World believe that Jesus Christ

is being boiled for eternity in human waste.

We must understand that modern day Judaism is a false religion, brothers and sisters; for if we don’t, how can we understand what else The Talmud says, when it claims that pedophiles can only be held legally liable…if their victim is under 9yrs old? (Sanhedrin 54b)

If we were to begin asking questions about these teachings in The Talmud, and are met with convoluted answers attributing them to history, then maybe certain things in history will come into better focus.

When the Roman Empire sacked Jerusalem in 70ad, the Jewish people scattered all over the world, settled into numerous different countries, and because of their history in Babylon and Assyria, they maintained their way of life. They established enclaves, villages, schools, and synagogues, but it was all in direct relation to the tolerance of the people they lived amongst. Which resulted in the Jews being expelled from dozens of different cities, regions, or Nations as a whole. There is a fuller list of places I was able to historically verify on the last page of this Manuscript, but to list a few: The Jews were kicked out of The Byzantine Empire twice; England; Italy; France twice; Hungary; Spain; Portugal; Austria; Russia; Nazi Germany; Iraq and many many more.

Moving into the present, we can ask who oversees the World’s largest online filth provider? A Rabbi, who said on video that he coaches defense attorneys on how to reduce the sentences of people who hurt children.

Another pervert, Alvin Goldstein, in a book from 2004, said this: “The only reason that Jews are in this industry is that we think that Christ “stinks”. Catholicism “stinks”. We don't believe in authoritarianism. It thus becomes a way of defiling Christian culture and, as it penetrates to the very heart of the American mainstream, and is no doubt consumed by those very same WASPs, (White-Anglo-Saxton-Protestants) its subversive character becomes more charged.”

Yes, these are only two examples, of course, but what do we do when we see the Israeli government supporting homosexuality to the point that the Tel Aviv gay pride festival, in 2016, was the largest celebration of sodomy in the entire World. Furthermore, what happens when we look at the abortion numbers for Israel, and see them landing at around 20,000 per year; and then add in the slaughter of more than 64,000 Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip performed by Israeli forces? Are the words of the Prophets so distant to us, that when we see the Israelites acting in the exact same way that Isaiah and Jeremiah said they did thousands of years ago…that we get surprised?

Isaiah 57:5 → “You who burn with lust among the oaks, under every green tree, who slaughter your children in the valleys, under the clefts of the rocks.” (ESV)

Jeremiah 19:4 - 6 → “Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods… and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, [5] and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind— [6] therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.” (ESV)

All in all, the question these truths should make us ask…is“Why?”. Why did those countries target them? Why did Hitler? Is it simply because they are God’s chosen people, and unredeemed humanity hates them because of it? Is it because God is punishing them for killing His Son? What about Romans 11, does God still have a future plan for a specific ethnicity…that He doesn't for other ethnicities? Is God going to look at someone’s DNA when they are standing before Him to be judged? What is the Christian in 2025 America to think when faced with questions about the Jews?

Were almost at the nuance

Going further along this same train of thought, and to not only “pick on the Jews”; how is the Christian in 2025 America supposed to think when it comes to any race?

Why, in 2019, were African Americans responsible for 51% of the murder arrests, while only making up 13% of the population? Could it be because 5.3 million black children are growing up without a father?

Why, out of the 15 Supreme Court Justices to have opposed Abortion, 13 of them were white? Could it be because 48% of Childhood Sexual assault is performed by white people?

Why do Native Americans experience violent crime twice as much as the National Average?

Why do 420 million Indians defecate in the streets of whatever country they live in?

Why do 58% of Americans indulge in explicit online material?

Why do the countries of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, and Iraq; own over 1.7 million slaves right now in 2025? Could it be because their prophet Mohammed had a 9yr old wife and the Quran itself says “Kill the polytheists wherever you find them. And capture them, and besiege them, and lie in wait for them at every ambush.” (Quran 9.5)? When the Muslim mayor downstate says there are over a million muslims in NYC…we should pay attention.

What say you, fellow Christian? What do we think? Do we simply say the true thing, that sins are present in different people groups, because of The Fall, because of sin…and not give it anymore thought? Should we wiggle our way out of these numbers by saying they aren’t representative of the whole people group? “Not all Jews, Blacks, Whites, or all the other races act in that way.”

Would that be sufficient for us? For you individually? Does this kind of material cause you to shrink back in fear of being labeled a “racist”, so instead of facing it down with an open Bible…you ignore it altogether?

Or we could think about policies and politics, laws and customs, parents and children, and see all of these “human-sided” things as being the reason behind certain sins being more prevalent in one ethnicity than they are in another. Surely that could be brought into the conversation, right? But is that the entire problem? Does it all stem from ‘this’ or ‘that’ law or event, and given enough time and cooperation and empathy and kindness, and all the rest of those happy happy feelings…America is going to figure it all out? As appealing as that option may be, we must understand that these kinds of divides have been going on for far longer than our current Nation. Once you stop using modern American policies and feelings as the reason behind the patterns you see in different ethnicities, you’ll start to ask even more questions.

Why were Africans living in mud huts during the same time that the Europeans were building Castles? (1000 - 1300)
Why were the people in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway using rape as worship during the same time frame that the Spanish were building Churches? (800 - 1100)
Why were the Japanese practicing ritual suicide at the same time that the Ethiopians were translating the Greek Old Testament into their Native language? (900-1300)
Why was Britain able to end slavery through Legislation…but America had to descend into civil war? (1800-1865)

Across all humanity and all time, different ethnicities have sinned in one way, while others went in a different direction; both wicked and Godly cultures have risen to the surface of civilization while the other flounders; and if we want to make peace between the races, we need to find a truth that transcends every culture and every race, from every period of human history.

Now for the nuance:

To help us see how we can make peace between different ethnicities, we need to ask what could possibly be strong and influential enough to separate humanity to such a degree. We all know the answer today. We know it's sin, right? But what sin is it, and how has it gripped humanity for so long?

_____

As we look for the answer, we need to understand that cultural norms, goods, and evils; ethnic norms, goods, and evils; don't spring into existence from nowhere. We could insert a dozen stereotypes about the cultural norms of different ethnicities, but I think you all get the point. They didn't come from nowhere…they came from the people.

It is people who build cultures.

It is people who worship, work, build, destroy, love, and hate.

It is people who sin.

This is why God gave parents the command to raise up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4), because (among many other things) it creates a Godly family, and when members of a Godly family leave the four walls of their parents to build their own, it creates a Godly culture.

The culture of a race is downstream of the people within it.

“Aha” the racist will then shout out, “...all of those negative things you listed that are more prevalent in one race than another…really are because of the people, right?”

And that right there is where we see the sin.

The idea that people are nothing but blank slates when they are born; neither good nor evil, is not the way that God made humanity. We are not lumps of neutral clay, where the only positives or negatives that come about in the life of someone are there because of their environment, childhood, parents, friends, or economy. We are affected by our cultures, of course, but we are not by-products of it.

God created humanity as sinless creatures (Ecc. 7:29), able to choose between right and wrong; and though we still have that ability (Deut. 30:15); because of The Fall, our hearts are always inclined toward evil (Gen. 8:21).

The culture of a race is downstream from its people, yes, but the people are downstream from their heart. Since that fateful day in The Garden, humanity has consistently followed after the wicked dictates of their wicked hearts (Jer. 17:9); and at its root, the deepest desire of the unregenerate heart is to live into the lie we believed. “You will be like God.” (Gen. 3:5).

So long as someone continues on in unrepentance, they will always and foundationally strive to be the final say for everything concerning life and Godliness. Natural man orients his entire life around himself; living and thinking and believing and fighting to ensure that he himself is the center of his own life. We want to be the ultimate deciding factor for what love looks like; for what a marriage should or shouldn't be; for what laws and political policies shouldn't or shouldn't be on the books; and for what is good and what is evil.

This is why America is in the condition we are in right now in 2025, and it is something that every Christian knows to be true. Now…to place this truth inside of our Sermon together this morning; If someone isn’t worshipping God, they are worshipping themselves.

And what better way to worship yourself than to direct your glory towards those who look like your god? Towards those who look like yourself?

Which means then, brothers and sisters, and take special note of this; when we set about trying to make peace between different ethnicities, we aren’t trying to equalize human rights for everybody or make sure that everyone is nice to one another, no. Our efforts may manifest in that way, of course, but the foundation of every attempt at making peace between ethnicities is an act of holy war. It is fighting false worship. It is toppling idols. It is confronting the oldest sin in Scripture. Is it any wonder that the very next Beatitude speaks of our persecution?

The unrepentant considers God his enemy (Col. 1:21); and the eternity that God placed within his heart (Ecc. 3:11) has been suppressed by his love of self (Rom. 1:18; Gen. 3:5), so much so, that all he can do to carry out his campaign against the Divine and make a name for himself, is to work side by side with his true god.

Genesis 11:1 - 9 → “Now the whole earth had one language and one speech… [4] And they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top is in the heavens; let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”...[7] Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.” [8] So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. [9] Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”

The Tower of Babel was an attempt at self-worship, until God put an end to it, causing differing cultures and people groups to come about; and the dark heart of man has consistently compelled them to go back to Babel. To work against God and make a name for themselves.

True, honest to goodness racism; not simply name calling; but the kind that believes the good or evil of a person is only present because of their DNA, is nothing but rank idolatry. It is self-worship to assert that you and your people have a “step up” over other races for no other reason than the choices of your ancestors and the culture they created…because it shows that you believe people are sovereign, that people have the final say in how human society grows and shrinks. What will the non-Christian say about the statistics we talked about? What will they say about blacks living in huts while whites built castles? They’ll say it was the people.

“My people make good choices, yours don’t. My people build nations and cultures, and your people break them down.”

But what will the Christian say?

When asked why white people were pillaging while the Spanish were building, how does the Christian answer? When someone who believes that no spiritual good leading to salvation can be found anywhere within their flesh (Rom. 7:18), is asked why the Japanese were killing themselves for cultural clout while black people were translating ancient Greek…what do they say? What are we here this morning supposed to think about blacks in America being the leading cause of violent crime, or whites being the leading cause of children being sexually abused?

Why does one culture, nation, or ethnicity rise or fall?

Why has the history of one race unfolded in ways that are different from others? Because God has foreordained whatsoever comes to pass (Eph. 1:11; Is. 46:10); accounts the Nations on Earth as dust (Is. 40:15); is free to build or break, bless or hold back blessings, all according to His own will and purposes (Job 12:23); and does according to His own will among the inhabitants of the earth (Dan.4:35), and no one can restrain His hand or say to Him “what have you done?” (Dan. 4:35)

Just because one people-group sins in different ways than yours, is of no earthly significance because all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). No matter how Godly of a culture one race was empowered to create, it doesn't matter because not a single member of that race was good…no, not one (Rom. 3:10). Regardless of the depth of evil we can see being present in one race, but effectively hiding behind the behavior of another, all of them are like sheep that have gone astray (Is. 53:6). Every member of every race is nothing but a sinner bound for Hell lest God intervenes. And…He did.

God did something about the national and ethnic pride and hatred that came about after Babel…on the day of Pentecost. In Acts 2, immediately after The Third Person of The Trinity descended like tongues of fire atop the heads of those in hiding, we read → “And there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men, from every nation under heaven. And when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confused, because everyone heard them speak in his own language. Then they were all amazed and marveled, saying to one another, “Look, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born? Parthians and Medes and Elamites, those dwelling in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjoining Cyrene, visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—we hear them speaking in our own tongues the wonderful works of God.”

When humanity was fractured along the fault-lines of race, using themselves to worship themselves; God reversed the division from Babel, created a new race, and bound them by something far stronger than the impotent and flaccid blood and soil they had used to bind themselves before.

And the bond that exists between the members of this new genealogy is deeper than DNA, and more comforting than cultures. It is a people that can never be swept away by raging waves, for it is a people founded not on sinking sand, but on the rock. And every member of this people group has a spot reserved for them at the Family Table that was paid for by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. Him who rules and reigns over all Nations, counting every one of them as nothing but dust to be brushed aside, descended into humanity as a Jew, and opened the path of salvation to all peoples as the Romans opened His back.

Ephesians 2:11-18

“Therefore remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh…[12] that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. [13] But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. [14] For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, [15] having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, [16] and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. [17] And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. [18] For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

The dividing wall between Jew and Gentile; the separation that exists between every race, can only ever and always will be broken down by the peace Christ made on the Cross. Dying at the hands of Romans that were prompted forward by Jews to the cheers of the Gentiles, Jesus Christ died, making peace, and created one single master race.

Yes, there is a master race, one inherently better than every single other to have ever existed. Yes, there is a race that God favors more than others. Yes, there is a race that God blesses more than others. There is a race of people upon the planet that is guaranteed entrance into eternity and nothing can ever take it away, Christians. But this preference towards a certain people, brothers and sisters, has nothing to do with who they are. It has nothing to do with their strengths, weaknesses, ancestry or genealogy. If you have repented of your sins and believed in the Gospel of Jesus Christ, then you were made to be sons and daughters not because of your blood…but because of His; and the soil that binds you to one another is nothing short of every piece of dirt beneath your feet, no matter where you are.

1st Peter 2:9 & 10 → “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (ESV)

_____

And it is a race that is open to every ethnicity. When John the Revelator is granted a glimpse forward, seeing the end of human history and the worship of Jesus Christ in the eschaton, he sees people so numerous in number and varied in race, that they are all one.

There will be Mayans among the multitude of Rev. 7:9, side by side with Prussians, Picts, and Poles; as they stand shoulder to shoulder with the Blacks and Burmese, the Whites and Wakashani, and the Jews and Japanese. Among the people who are standing before the throne and before the Lamb, will be Saxons, Scots, and Spaniards; Russians, Romans, and Rhodesians; and Egyptians, Ethiopians, and Edomites. Members from every tribe, tongue, and nation will be represented, all of them standing in robes made white by the blood of Christ, with palm branches in their hand as they raise their varied voices and sing aloud for the entire Universe to hear: “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

In closing:

To close out a Sermon such as this, and refuse to ignore the differences between the races, we must once more look at Scripture.

When the Apostle Paul confronted a pagan religion, amongst members of a different race than himself, he said this in Acts 17:24 - 27 → “God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands. [25] Nor is He worshiped with men’s hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. [26] And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, [27] so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us.”

Why did God appoint borders for different people groups?

So that they should seek the Lord, because He isn't closer to one group than another.

No matter the distance between our cultures, all of us are equally dead without Him. No matter the depth of union between members of our own race, we are all dead without Him. He isn't far from each and every single one of us.

And just like we understand our own personal life, glorifying and worshipping and living and working through the highs and lows of whatever God has ordained to come our way…so can a people as well.

No matter the depth of sin you may see in your people in history or in modernity… repent and believe in Jesus Christ. No matter how often people of your skin color act in this way or that…repent and believe in Jesus Christ. Your people have no spiritual or civic advantage over others, because you were just as dead as everyone else.

If you want to be a peacemaker, then aim high, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. Set your sights at the heart of enemy territory, at a problem that has persisted for generations, refuse to back down from the truth of who Jesus Christ is; Fully God and fully man; fully divine and fully Jewish; perfect and sinless in every way; the only way into the presence of His Father; the author and perfector of our faith; apart from whom is nothing but endless war and suffering, but with whom…is endless peace.

“Blessed are the peacemakers,

for they shall be called sons of God.”

Matthew 5:9

Rev. Jacob Marchitell

December 21st 2025

Jewish expulsions starting after 70ad

Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and portions of Egypt - 117 - Emperor Trajan - Diaspora Revolt
Judea - 132 - 135 - Emperor Hadrian - Bar Kokhba Revolt

These were the jews that remained in outlying cities after the Romans sacked Jerusalem in 70ad, and when the geographic region was renamed “Palestine”.

Alexandria, Egypt - 415 - Bishop Cyril - result of Jewish massacre of Christians
Byzantine Empire - 422 - Theodosius II - Law excluding Jews from public office
Hispania (Iberian Peninsula) and Septimania (southern France) - 610-620

Visigothic King ‘Sisebut’ prohibited Judaism, enforced baptisms; Jews fled or were expelled.

Frankish Kingdom - 629 (modern France & Germany) King Dagobert I expelled all Jews.
Byzantine Empire - 630 - Emperor Heraclius - Forced conversion and expulsion edicts
England - 1290 - King Edward I - Edict of Expulsion
France - 1306 - King Philip IV - Expulsion Edict of 1306
France - 1394 - King Charles VI - Final Expulsion of the Jews from France
Italy - 1322 - Emperor Louis IV - Imperial Expulsion Orders
Hungary - 14th-15th c. - King Louis I / King Sigismund - Royal Expulsion Decrees
Spain - 1492 - Ferdinand II & Isabella I - Alhambra Decree
Portugal - 1497 - King Manuel I - Edict of Forced Conversion and Expulsion
Kingdom of Naples - 1541 - Emperor Charles V - Expulsion Decree of 1541
Austria - 1670 - Emperor Leopold I - Vienna Expulsion Edict
Russia - 1791 - Catherine the Great - Pale of Settlement Decree
Nazi Germany - 1930s-1940s - Adolf Hitler - Nuremberg Laws
Iraq - 1950 - Regent ʿAbd al-Ilah - Denaturalization Act of 1950
Egypt - 1948-1956 - King Farouk / Nasser - Sequestration and Expulsion Orders
Yemen - 1949-1950 - Imam Ahmad - Operation Magic Carpet Decrees
Syria - 1947-1948 - President Shukri al-Quwatli - Confiscation and Travel Ban Orders
Libya - 1949 - King Idris I - Jewish Property Confiscation Laws
Morocco - 1948 - Sultan Mohammed V - Emigration Restrictions and Confiscation Orders
Algeria - 1948 - 1962 - French Colonial Authorities - Repeal of Crémieux Protections